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OVERVIEW

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Brief Synopsis

Dr. Albert T. Hopfnagel, a greedy hospital administrator, is an expert in the arts of bill-padding, unnecessary surgery, and kickbacks. His assistant Alice however, has finally had enough of his scams and gets him sent to prison--but not for long enough...

Intent on maintaining and increasing the financial success of his private hospital, conniving administrator Albert P. Hopfnagel encourages insurance fraud and forces his surgeons to perform expensive, unnecessary surgeries on unsuspecting patients. When admitting nurse Alice Gilligan, Hopfnagel's girl friend, discovers that unemployed construction worker Lester Hammond, who has come to the hospital for a simple X-ray, owns his own home and can be exploited, she orders a number of costly tests to be run on him. Hopfnagel then schemes with lab technician Nishimoto to convince the hapless Hammond that he is in desperate need of an appendectomy. Meanwhile the city's hospital commissioner, long suspicious of the hospital's financial activities, begins investigating Hopfnagel. When Hammond discovers that his lab report has been altered and he has been operated on without cause, Hopfnagel quickly convinces Alice to seduce Hammond to prevent him from pressing charges. Alice complies, only to discover that Hopfnagel has set up a camera to film her liaison with Hammond. Outraged, Alice retaliates by organizing a wild Mexican fiesta party on one of the hospital floors on the same day of the commissioner's inspection visit. Hopfnagel is dismissed and the commissioner appoints Hammond to remain as a staff investigator. After serving his prison term, Hopfnagel returns to the hospital intent on revenge and pretends to be in need of an appendectomy so that he may later sue for malpractice. Although Hopfnagel arranges his surgery with the corrupt head surgeon, as he is brought in to the operating room, he hears with panic that the doctor has turned over the operation to his completely incompetent brother-in-law who does not know the location of the appendix.